Odds and Sods

[captainsblog]

I've been in the habit of writing these during the day, often on walks, and then posting late in the day or even the next morning, as with the comedy post just sent. This one, written entirely at an actual keyboard, will just catch up some odds and ends from the past week, or, in the last case, from between seven and 42 years ago.

Working backwards in time:

* The Lake Wobedog post would have had one sad story added if I'd posted it after getting back from taking Pepper out yesterday. I saw our neighbor Pam, about to head out on a walk herself with her newest rescue, a spaniely girl named Ladybug.




She was adopted out of an Amish puppy mill, and the looks on faces of both human and dog made clear how this poor dog's first five years had gone.

She'd already told me that Ladybug had never been allowed inside a human house until she got here. She was a broodmare and nothing more. This was a month or so later, though, in a very loving home with a human who is retired and with her most of the day. Still, 30 days can't overcome five years of essentially Amish abuse. Pam herself has walking problems, which is why I'd never seen her out of her yard walking Ladybug or any of her previous three rescues, at least two of them now passed. She was giving it a go, though, because she's been working with a trainer and her vet to get Ladybug over the serious anxiety issues that remain from her earlier maltreatment, and getting her out of the house and interacting with other life forms is an important part of that. She has to be crated inside the house when mommy is not actively with her because she has no sense of what she can't destroy, and Pam had to order a custom crate for her because she got so anxious trying to chew her way out of the original one, she broke a tooth off.

I've also heard from another friend that Amish rescues can have major trouble adjusting to commercial dog food because they've never had anything like it before. Slop the slop and drop the puppies, and then thee shall repeat.

Amisholes.

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On a happier note following up from last weekend, I did hear back from the couple I'd christened as my latest Beth and Bill.



I'd texted that photo to them as they asked, and then sent them the link to the post that included it, with their faces but not names; I'd add or subtract as they preferred. I got this in response a day or so later:

Hi Ray! Great blog. Go ahead and post. Frann LaRocca and Roselle Sweeney or “Roc and Roe” . Thanks again for the sweet memories.

Nothing I can add to that except ❤❤❤❤

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And finally, turning the dial to the far end of the Wayback Machine:

I was just reminded that today is the anniversary of Harry Chapin's tragic death in a road accident on July 16, 1981. This anniversary is one of those "where were you" days for me. I was not in East Meadow's Eisenhower Park, where he was headed for a benefit show that night, though I grew up there and spent a lot of time in that park. I was working in Ithaca for the then-plural Syracuse newspapers, and when an editor noticed that Harry had gone to Cornell years earlier, I was assigned to find the two people still alive who remembered him from then. And I did!



My more recent recollection of this was here, not quite seven years ago, where I was reminded of that sad event and of my ephemeral connection to it, and sought out a copy of that obituary from the city it was buried in, on my way to a planned two-night trip to New York and east. I never made it to that second night, though I did meet her here not long after:

My only real reason for the second night was to see Harry Chapin's daughter Jen in concert out in Suffolk Friday night, but she's played nearer to us before and likely will again. Plus, I'll have more of a chance to tell her the whole story of why I wanted to see her perform.

So it was out the door yesterday at about my usual worktime, a quick stop in the Buffalo office, no stop in Rochester, and making Syracuse around noon: I had an obituary to look up: her father's.

The central library there is in a newer-looking building on the onetime main department-store drag; it may have even been Sibley's ages ago. Reference is on the third floor, ladies lingerie, and I rode up with an old-school security guard. If you remember Curtis, the Blues Brothers' mentor played by Cab Calloway in the film? Yeah, pretty much him. He was just flabbergasted by the dude he had to shoo out of the computer room: "Man! He was so-o-o-o hi-gh-h-h-h!"

Once on three, they showed me how to access the newspaper archive. Took a few narrowings- I did know Harry's date of death, but not how long thereafter before it got published- but there it was, in the pages of the Oswego edition, two days after he passed.

In time, I did meet, and shared that post with, his daughter Jen, who I've become friends with. She loved it but totally doesn't believe the part about her dad driving a taxi in Ithaca.

(In checking the date just now, I also saw something saying he was fifth cousins with folk singer Mary Chapin-Carpenter, who I hope to see with Shawn Colvin at UB this fall. Not sure I'm believing that bit, either.)